Earl Stewart on Cars - 04.09.2022 - Your Calls, Texts, and Mystery Shop of AutoNation Honda of Hollywood

Episode Date: April 9, 2022

Earl and his team answer various caller questions and responds to incoming text messages. Earl’s female mystery shopper, Agent Lightning travels to the Fort Lauderdale area to see how much over the sticker price the local AutoNation dealer will charge her for a new 2022 Honda Pilot SUV on the lot. Earl Stewart is the owner of Earl Stewart Toyota in North Palm Beach, Florida, one of the largest Toyota dealerships in the southeastern U.S. He is also a consumer advocate who shares his knowledge spanning 50+ years about the car industry through a weekly newspaper column and radio show. Each week Earl provides his audience with valuable tips that prevent them from "getting ripped off by a car dealer". Earl has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, and other major publications. He has also made numerous appearances on CNN, Fox News, CBS, and other news networks. He is frequently called upon by local and national media to comment on major trends and newsworthy events occurring in today’s rapidly changing auto industry. You can learn more by going to Earl's videos on www.youtube.com/earloncars, subscribing to his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/earloncars, his tweets at www.twitter.com/earloncars, and reading his blog posts at www.earloncars.com. Sign up to become one of Earl's Vigilantes and help others in your community to avoid getting ripped off by a car dealer. Go to www.earlsvigilantes.com for more information. “Disclosure: Earl Stewart is a Toyota dealer and directly and indirectly competes with the subjects of the Mystery Shopping Reports. He honestly and accurately reports the experiences of the shoppers and does not influence their findings. As a matter of fact, based on the results of the many Mystery Shopping Reports he has conducted, there are more dealers on the Recommended Dealer List than on the Not Recommended List he maintains on www.GoodDealerBadDealerList.com”

Good morning. I'm Earl Stewart. I welcome you to Earl Stewart on Cars, a live talk show all about how to buy, lease, maintain, or repair your car without being ripped off by a car dealer. With me in the studio is Nancy Stewart, my wife, co-host, and a strong consumer advocate, especially for our female business. We also have Rick Kearney, an expert on how to keep your car running right. I dare you to ask a question that Rick can't answer about the mechanics or electronics of your car. Also with us as my son, Stu Stewart, our linked to cyberspace through Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Periscope. Stu is also the Spymaster Director of our Mystery Shopping Report. He dispatches our secret shopper weekly to an unsuspecting South Florida dealership.

And now, on with the show. Good morning, everybody. We're back again and again and again. You can't get rid of us. This is Earl Stewart on Cars. You heard the recorded introduction there. And we're all present and accounted for here in the studio. You're a regular team.

We got Stu Stewart, we got Jonathan, we got Rick, we got Earl, that's me, and we got Nancy. And we're live and in color. Stream us on Facebook. Or you can stream us on YouTube. It's YouTube.com. Forward slash Earl on Cars. Facebook.com forward slash Earl on Cars. we get a lot more audience outside our area here in south Florida

we're located in north Palm Beach Florida and we're about 100 miles north of Miami I say that because that was our base audience for many years and now I think we're getting about as many calls out of state and some out of the country thanks to streaming and we're just we're all over Washington D.C. for some reason is a big area for us on our podcast. So we got podcasts, we got YouTube videos, we're we're blanketing the earth with how not to get ripped

off by your car dealer. And what a better time to understand what's going on out there. It's a terrible time to buy a newer use car, terrible time. We are going through a shortage based on supply chain problems, especially with microchurchase, chips and we were having fewer cars sold this year than we did last year but the dealers are getting richer and richer and richer and we're they're making more money on the car than they've ever made before even though they're selling fewer it's terrible for you the consumer you've you have virtually no selection when you go into a dealer showroom now it's unusual if a dealer has, I'd say, what, 5% of the availability of cars that you might be

interested in. Usually the cars that are on the ground are pre-sold, waiting for someone to come and pick up, and you're probably going to have to order your car. By the way, my blog in Florida Weekly and Hometown News and at earlancars.com, my weekly blog is how to order a car and protect yourself. Really, if you're going to buy a car, if you have to buy a car today, you really should order it. If you buy the few cars that are available in a dealership today, you'll end up compromising what you want, maybe color, maybe accessories, and you're going to have to take a car that you really would prefer something else, and you're going to pay a real premium over what you could negotiate if you buy a car. Now, I mean if you order the car. Now if you order a car,

the way car deals look at it, this car is not coming out of my precious little inventory. It might be five or 20 or 25 cars. Even a big volume dealer probably doesn't have more than 50 cars in stock, and that's out of a model and accessory, a combination color. If you have so color in there, probably 500 cars. So you just have a teeny-weeny percentage of the selection that you should have. So if you're going to order a car, this blog, avoid six pitfalls of ordering a new car.

I'll hold it up. It's on our blogs. It's in Florida Weekly coming up next week. And coming up next week in hometown news. But you can get to earlancars.com right now. And as I say, don't buy a car today. New are you? You're going to pay thousands of dollars more than if you wait.

Now, I'm going to confess, if you're a regular listener of this show, I've been saying this for months and months. I meant it when I said I thought by the end of last year prices would come down. Boy, was that wrong? I said maybe into this year, haven't come down yet. Use cars a little

bit, but not much. And now the prediction is by the end of this year. I hope that's right. But you're better off to wait. I was interviewed yesterday, I think it was, it was a day before yesterday,

by the Wall Street Journal, auto reporter, and also by Associated Press Auto Reporter. And they were both doing articles on what should the car, leasers, buy, you know, if you're going to buy a car, lease car, what should you do? And what should you do with your used car,

or your off-lease car? These are all questions we'll talk about on this show. So if you're one of those folks out there that has to buy a car, and let's be realistic, I know a lot of you don't have to buy, you buy it anyway. People, you know, you're making money. The economy's good. We have record employment, record income. Unfortunately, we're having record inflation too. And large of that, large part of that are cars. But when you're making a lot of money and you got a job, you just like to

buy a car. If you're going to do it, you're going against my advice. But I'll listen carefully and ask questions. Call the show 877-960-9960. This is our preferred form of communication. but we've only got about five lines and sometimes they get tied up we don't want you to wait and if you call you might have to wait and therefore we give you some alternatives

but if you're going to call write this number down please even if you don't have a question now you might later and if you can't get through on the line now you might be able to get through later we're on from 8 to 10 Eastern Standard Time 8 to 10 Eastern Standard Time

so you can come back in 45 minutes Let's try. 877-960-9960. 877-960-99-60. Now, we have a text, 772. That's here we go. 772-4976530. That's 772, 4976530.

And our popular line, because it's anonymous, We have the only anonymous mode of contact of any talk show I know of, or any TV or any other thing. Anonymous. People like to remain anonymous. If you report a crime, sometimes you don't like to know, you don't want the bad guys to know you reported them, right? I mean, I don't know why people don't want to know, people know who they are. But it's okay. Your anonymous Feedback.com.

That's a URL, a web address. your Y-O-U-R-anonymous, A-N-O-N-Y-M-O-U-S, feedback. Feedback.com. Your anonymous Feedback.com. Shoot a message in there. Tell it like it is. I always say this to the car dealers out there listening and the car dealer employees listening.

If you have an ax to grind with me, and I know you do, you get totally undetected, but we will read your message on the air. We will skip over the, you know, profane of the obscene comments, but you can use them if it makes you feel better. But we'll get the meaning of your message out. We will read it, I promise. We'll thrive on constructive criticism, and we get it, and we change. We may change us in this show as a result of your feedback.

So 877-960. That's the audio line. Text 772-4976530. and Your AnonymousFeedback.com. I'm going to mention Stu Stewart is sitting right across from me. He's in charge of our mystery shopping report. If you haven't tuned in for any other reason, you've got to tune in for this mystery shopping report. Every week we shop a different car dealership.

This is unlike anything you'll see or hear anywhere in the media. Undercover agent goes in, pretence to buy, or lease a car, and response to an ad typically. And we tell it, like it is, we talk about were there any deception, was there any lying,

cheating or stealing? Was there a good job? Was there a medium job? How do the dealer rank? And then we vote on that dealership at the end of the report. We name names, we name dealerships, we name locations. We do it out of state. We do it mainly in the state, mainly

in the South Florida area. I won't tell you the name of the dealership right now, but this one was south of us. It was in Dade County. I think it's state county, right? Probably Dade County. Probably Dade County, yeah. But it's a big, big dealership and well-known, and we shop.

Sitting to my right is Rick Kearney, and he doesn't get the billing he should get because we talk too much about the exciting things, which are buying cars, leasing cars. All Rick does is fix. and maintain them, but I say that's all, let me tell you, that's a mouthful. You spend more on maintaining and repairing your car than you do in buying a car over all the years. It depends on how long you keep your car. It depends on the price of the car.

So I take that statement back. You spend a lot of money. And Rick can tell you how to minimize that cost. You can also tell you how to take care of your car. But the best thing Rick does, and we get a lot of calls on this, is diagnosing. You know, everything's, you used to go into the doctor's office and go through a whole bunch of stuff to get a diagnosis. Today, you're seeing online diagnosis by medical doctors. We've got Zoom, we've got audio, video, digital machinery. This is what, so you can call, and if you can give, either send an audio clip or a video clip to Rick, or maybe just describe it. If you can tell them what the noise is, the sound, the smell,

describe it, the vibration, we'll give you a free diagnosis on the air. Rick Kearney, certified master diagnostic technician. And save yourself a ton of money and aggravation, driving in, going through all the malarkey with the local mechanics or the dealerships, get a free diagnosis here. He'll tell you that he's not sure because you can't be sure, but you can say it's probably this. If you go in with an idea which your problem is, you're not going to take an advantage of nearly as much as if you have no idea. So Rick Kearney, 877-960-99-60, and Rick monitors YouTube. So, erloncars, YouTube.com, forward slash earlun cars.

YouTube.com forward slash roll on cars. And Rick will see that. And he'll wave at me and I'll say, okay, Rick, and he'll talk to your YouTube. By the way, Stu monitors Facebook.com forward slash relon cars. and he'll see your post and your text and things like that. And to my left is Nancy Stewart, my co-host, co-founder of the show with me many years ago, and the female advocate we call her, consumer advocate,

and she's bringing female opinions and thoughts and comments into this show. We're looking for parity. I think some weeks we have more female callers. She has a special offer for you first-time lady callers. Listen carefully. Because we know that you see things differently than men do, and oftentimes smarter than men do. And you are buying half the cars, gals. We know that.

And the manufacturers are starting to understand that. And the dealers are beginning to understand that. And you're starting to get the respect and recognition that you deserve. And Nancy Stewart here is largely responsible for that happening on this show. Nancy, the mic is yours. Good morning, everyone. and welcome. We have an exciting show ahead.

And as Earl mentioned earlier in his introduction, it's amazing. We have become an international show. Is that amazing? Wow. And thanks to all of you, all of you for helping us edge towards the international title. I want to remind everyone that you can subscribe to Earl Stewart on Cars

By using the podcast, you can take and go to the following podcast apps. By using your iPhone or your Android phone, and you can access Apple, Spotify, Google, Amazon, Stitcher, and SoundCloud. And that's amazing. There's just so many ways for you to get in touch with us. also this morning as usual we want to thank the ladies we want to thank you for helping me build this platform weekend and week out women represent a huge a huge opportunity for the auto industry $50 for the first two new lady callers $50 for the first two new lady callers so take advantage of that ladies

and give us a call at 877-960-9960. And for the rest of you, you can text us this morning. You can call us this morning. You can YouTube us. It's everything in between. Text number 772-4976530. And as Earl said, don't forget, Your Anonymous Feedback.com.

Your Anonymous Feedback.com. We're going to go straight to the phones where we have John holding from Boynton Beach good morning John good morning welcome thank you what's up John I was wondering what you thought about the new Rivian pickup trucks and is it too soon to buy electric yeah John that's a great question it's it's just there's so much talk going on Stu probably knows more about the Rubion than I do. I hear good things about it. You know, when you buy a new vehicle that has never been built before, you're taking a chance. But that's exciting. I'm driving a Tesla,

and that's only been around a short time. It's exciting. I think Tesla is going to come up with a truck. Everybody's going to have an electric truck shortly. But, Stu, what do you know about the Rubian? Rivian. They're really cool. I don't know much about it. I don't know much about it. about them at all. I just think the design is great and the specs that I'm hearing. They're really expensive. I mean, that's, I think that's going to be the, when the, when the dam breaks is when there's some mass market ones. And there will be. I mean, there's a lot in the works right now. And there's, there's some that are at it affordable price points. Is that the company that got in trouble by coasting their truck down the hill and saying, it might be. I think, is that the one,

Rick, do you know? I think so, yeah. It was the concept. So they had some bad PR in the beginning, and their stock isn't that great, but they're... John, I'm hearing a good thing technically about it, but morally, I worry about a company that would trick the potential consumers, but what they did is they took a truck that didn't have an electric engine in it, an electric motor, I should say, and showed it going along the highway and got a lot of PR and got a lot of attention, and then someone found out that they just rolled it to the top of the hill and pushed it. And then they finally had to come mount and come clean and confess. But that's not to say it's not going to be a heck of a truck

and they could be right up there contending with all the major manufacturers. I mean, but it's an electric car of truck and it has got full off-road capabilities and it's really impressive. I think it starts at $80,000, so that's not going to be a huge market. Is that all? That's it? We need a Henry Ford for electric vehicles. Wait, we don't have one? Oh, mass production. Right. Think about it. That's Elon Musk. Cars, when cars first started getting on the road, they were huge money, only a few people could afford them, and all of a sudden, here comes Henry Ford.

Well, that's what Elon Musk is doing, so he is the Henry Ford, and he's scaling up his production right now. He's going into the megafactories, and he's built one in Germany. I just finished one in Texas. The gigas. The gigas. And the gigas, and he says he's just bringing, he's coming up to scale now, so he's doing exactly what you said. John, we're doing all the talking, and you called, what's on your. mine.

I was going to say, is it too soon to buy electric? I'm concerned that I can only drive 300 miles and I may or may not be able to charge it at my destination. We went to Vermont this past weekend and the hotel only at one charging station and there was a Tesla there. So that's my

second concern. John, if I were you, if I were going to buy electric vehicle today and buy a Tesla for the very reason you bring up because they have a national charging system and it's very sophisticated. My son, Stu, drove one for a while. I'm driving one now. And when you're in the car on your, on your screen, wherever you are, that tells you the nearest charging station. And you can go from coast to coast. You can go east to west, north to south. And anywhere in Florida, certainly, you're always within easy range of a charging station. Plus, it tells you what charges are available, what the waiting time is, and how fast. the charger is. So you can pick and choose. You can get a supercharger that will charge your car

in 20, up to 80% in 20 minutes, or you can go to one of the trickles, slower chargers, and just top it off or put a few more miles on it. But don't let the charging be a problem unless you buy a non-Tesler. But even in that case, there's some other charging charge points, a big one. And they have, I think, 20,000 or 18,000 stations. And they have an app, just like that. like Tesla, and you can find really easily, and they're all over the place. I've never had a hard time finding a station. Got a new Tesla coming out.

Okay, that's all I get, guys. What's that, John? I said, that's all I got. I appreciate the reply. What you ask is a great question goes is on the minds of thousands, millions of people. We're all thinking the same thing. When do I buy my electric?

I started to say that Tesla's come out with our new model, which will be the lowest price model and their volume model. And it's under $50,000. I think it might be around $30,000. And $30,000, correct me if I'm wrong. I know a lot of people have got the answer to that. But I would stick with the Tesla right now.

In about a year, you can have a choice of two or three more good models. And plus a used one. That was the one I was driving a used one. Exactly, yeah. Not now, though. Thank you, John. Appreciate it. Call again.

Thank you, guys. Have a good day. You too. Thanks. Have a great weekend. We're going to go to Ward. Who's holding? Good morning, Ward. What can we do for you?

Yeah, I just want to give a shout out to employers that recently passed. Horace Walker. Amen. One of the nicest, kindest person I've ever met in my life. Rest and peace, Horace. Absolutely. Rest and peace.

I hope everybody who knew him hears it because he was one of a kind. He sure was. Everybody in the studio here knew at Horacewell. I saw Stu that you put a nice note on there, and I as well. And his service is today at four. I don't know if I'll be able to make it, but you definitely got my attention when I came in to buy a car from you all.

So may you rest in peace. Thank you, Ward. Thanks for the call. That means a lot to us, and I know the family I appreciate it. Please call again. Okay. Thank you, Ward. But we're going to go to David in West Palm Beach.

Good morning, Dave. Good morning, guys. This is Dog Walker, Dave. Hey. Hey. Hi, Dave. Yeah, listen, I haven't been calling in, but that doesn't mean I haven't been listening. Oh, thank you.

Listen, I got one for Rick, I think. I bought a couple of months ago a 2014 Ford Edge, less than 30,000 miles. This thing had been garaged, its whole life, still has your original tires on it. And I went to Publix the other day, and as I was, after I put the groceries in the back, using the lift gate, the automatic lift gate,

when I got in the car and started it and put it in reverse, the camera went out, and the lift gate opened. And so I went back and made sure there were no obstructions and closed it again and it did the same thing again. And I liked and never got out of the parking lot. So what I did is I had to back out with the lift gate open and close it in order to drive it home.

Oh, man. Since then, since then, what I have noticed, is with the lift gate I mean with the backup camera my camera comes on but the guidelines and warning zones

don't show up anymore but I still get an audible warning if I'm getting too close to something and I also on the dash it shows a lift gate error now

on the forums particularly YouTube, the only thing that I have found that might get me out of this predicament without taking it to a garage is a reset by pulling the lift gate fuse for a minute and then putting it back in and maybe that will correct the problem. Otherwise, Rick, do I have to take this to a Ford dealership to have it trouble shot or could somebody else do it in a garage? or a Toyota dealership. What are my options here? What do you think?

First question, what's the year and mileage on your car? 2014. A 14. Okay. Less than 30,000 miles. On a 14. Wow. Wow.

Super low. Yeah. I would go a little more extreme on that reset. Pull the negative terminal off of the battery. Much easier to get to. pull that off, wait about three, four minutes, reconnect it, wait about four or five minutes to let everything boot back up and try it again. Sometimes just rebooting the system will correct a lot of those issues. If that doesn't do it, most likely you're going to wind up at a Ford dealership.

You can call around and check a few places. What I would do is go online and look for forums for Ford edge forums for local guys and see if anyone here knows anyone that you know a local mechanic that is trained for that but some of those the sensors in that it may require their special software in order to diagnose what you got going on yeah that's really what i was hoping not to hear yeah i hear you i understand that one yeah i think you he said you've already I looked at YouTube, Dave, you know, online, as Rick said, that's your best bet. You've got your symptoms very specifically described, and that's really good. And because you've got some mechanical knowledge, you can be pretty exact.

And you put that in Google, and it'll take you to chat rooms and other forums and sources of information. YouTube, I bet your answer is out there. and the more specific you can be on your search or on Google, the more likely you are to get an answer. Yeah, that's the next step for me. You know, I have the owner's manual, right? The original owner's manual, 500 pages. Yeah, and not really good reading, not at all.

It just says in the owner's manual that if I, get a lift gate error on my dashboard indicator that the backup camera should not even work at all. And yes, that's not the case. Now, I will also add, because it's all of a sudden, I can go in reverse now, and the lift gate doesn't open automatically. I mean, it's just, it's like no consistency in this problem at this point. And I'm afraid I'm going to end up at a Ford dealership. I I really am, and I just didn't want to do that. So I thank you for the suggestion of trying to find, perhaps, on a forum, a local guy who's got to Ford. If you've got a dealer, we'd recommend Mullinix.

I don't know where he planned and going, but they're a pretty good outfit. We have them on a recommended list. We don't have a lot of data on their service department, but they're honest people, and you might want to start there. all right well tell you what if I do and I'll give you a call again next one of these Saturdays and let you know what we found out and how the service was great well we know them all next people and tell them Earl Stewart on cars recommended you and they've we've talked to them in the past and they're they're honest people they'll give you a fair shake good deal good deal hey listen guys thanks for the show every week oh you're welcome Dave and thanks for

staying in touch with us. We look forward to hearing from you again on this problem. Have a great weekend. Remember, ladies and gentlemen, you can give us a call at 877-9-60-9-60, or you can text us at 772-4976530. Don't forget, ladies, we have $50 for the first two new lady callers. Give us a call. Whether you had, you know, whether you have a complaint or you're compliment you know your salesperson lease person and if you just want to say hello 877960 and don't forget earl's column from quite a long time ago but I keep repeating this every week it's very helpful to the consumer and it is www. Florida law protecting car buyers That's WWW Florida Law Protecting

Excuse me Anyway, let me start over again Remember, www Florida Law Protecting Carbuyers.com Take advantage of that. There's a lot of information on that column And you can access that at Irwan Cars. Now back to the recovering car dealer. You know, Dave's call gave me a couple of thoughts.

You're talking about restarting, rebooting, I call it. That's, it isn't a joke, it's true, and Rick alluded to it. The rebooting can cure just about anything, and maybe they'll reboot humans one day. Amen. I had a management meeting the other day, and Stu was hosting the management meeting, and my computer went out, and I went out, I was in a hurry to reboot it, and I rebooted it too fast, and Rick just said something that is, if you're in a hurry, you're angry, sometimes you forget, when you reboot, you turn whatever it is off, leave it off for a couple minutes,

and then when you turn it back on, you have to wait a couple minutes. I mean, all those little digital things, those little transistors and microchips, They've got to cool down, warm up, and kind of get cranking again. And when you turn everything off, leave it off for a little while. So right after the Zoom meeting... We reboot every night. That's when we sleep. After the Zoom meeting.

Then I went out and I said, okay, I'll try waiting for two minutes, and everything came back up again. So I could have been back online. Slow as fast. That was exactly. We're the rebooters in Jupiter. Yeah, exactly. Jupiter rebooters. He just drive around and remind people to just try them plugging and plug it back in.

Listen, and if you're wondering, everything is digital now, so it doesn't make any difference. I mean, if you accidentally unplug, re-plugs up and then it doesn't need it, it's not going to hurt anything, Rick. By the way, Negan 1 on YouTube here corrected us. It was not the Rivian truck. It was the Nicola Seminole truck. My apologies. My apologies. My apologies to move down the hill.

So Rivian is moral and didn't do that. Well, but actually, Nicola now, coming from, Negan 1, he says, the Nicola truck is actually doing a lot better now. His company is actually testing one of them. He says it's extremely impressive. And their plant is about 15 miles away from him there in Arizona. Yeah. So, interesting thoughts. I think trucks really lend themselves to electric battery-powered.

than anything else. Because a big truck, you're not worried about the size of the battery that much. And with a portion of the size, smaller cars definitely are overwhelmed by a big battery. But a semi-tracker trailer, just a little chunk of equipment compared to a car. But those electric motors, that torque, it's like having, there's remote-controlled toys, but they're big now. Exactly. They can do what toys used to be able to do. And the biggest issue there is the torque that electric motors produce,

instantly is what gets that load moving. So when, as a matter of fact, when the Highlander hybrid first came out, we were recommending that to anyone who owned a boat. Yeah. Because a four-wheel drive electric vehicle could pull a boat up a ramp easier than any vehicle out there.

That's so cool. Okay. How about techs? We got any tech? Yeah, we have a bunch that came in. We'll kick it off with Ambris, but we might have some, we have a caller.

Yeah, we have a couple of callers. We're going to go to Howard. He's a regular caller from Jupiter. Chal Howard Yes Nice talking to you guys

Nice hearing from you Good soire Okay Okay I got a question Actually Actually it's a A question for

Rick Rick There's a vow that came out In the late 60s That is usually never replaced on a modern car. You know what valve that is?

PCV valve, positive crank case ventilation valve. Okay. How much does he win? Oh, boy. You need to do that more often. You guys set this out before the show, didn't you? Nope.

Okay, Rick's taken over. I just knew Howard. Excuse me, do you read minds or something? How did you get the answer to so fast? Because actually, they're hardly even used anymore. Now it's actually just a simple ventilation hose. And the original PCV valve had a little ball, a check ball in it that would prevent it from overpressuring.

So you've got rid started now, and I'm going to have to silence him because he's going to tell us how to build the PCV valve. Yeah. Modern technology, they're outdated now. Okay, so in other words, on a, let's take a Camry. To service of Camry, I don't see at any mileage where you replace the PVC valve. PCV, but nope, you never will. PCV.

Yeah, it's only if it, if something were to happen and it got plugged up, then you would replace that system. Otherwise, nope, it'll never need it. Technicians refers to it as the eternal valve. Yep. The valve of eternity. It's immortal. Unfortunately, I think, yeah, I'm going to have to have a valve job in my heart, so it's okay. I'm just kidding.

Okay, another question, Rick. Yesterday, while I was driving, the radio just cut out completely. And I was driving around, I was near Earl Stewart, and I pulled in. in and the radio started working again. So my question is, does this happen frequently? And what happens when a radio is completely finished? Do you get a rebuilt radio? Does Toyota supply a new radio? So my question is on automotive radios. What's the story on that? Modern radio, the newest ones, if you have an issue where it suddenly cuts out like that, stop in to see if there's a software update.

They're computerized now, just like your home computer. And updates come out quite frequently for them, and there's a lot of them. So you might just need a simple software update. If your radio stops working, and it's more than five or six years old, maybe six, seven, eight years old, I would investigate an aftermarket radio from somewhere like Best Buy or something like that before I would go for a factory radio, simply because if you go into the dealership, they're going, if they sell you a radio, they're going to sell you a rebuild or remanufactured radio. It's perfect. It works perfectly. But it's the same age as the original radio.

It's that technology level. Great point. Versus if you go into Best Buy, you just put a radio in your car that the technology is five, six, seven years advanced. And as fast as technology advances, you've suddenly got a massive new amount of technology in your car. And it makes your car feel kind of like a much newer car now because you've got this sudden new toy in there. Great advice. And they're fantastic. Great advice, Rick. Yeah.

Yeah, I have a 2017 Camry. So if my radio went Kepunk and I went to Best Buy, I would have more. More features, yeah. Imagine having wireless Apple CarPlay, wireless maps on the radio screen to where as you're driving along, radio, not only is the map up there, but it shows you the traffic,

it shows you an accident up ahead of you. If you're using Ys, it'll show you where the cops might be hiding out. Really? Wow. There you go. Okay. Okay. Okay, Howard.

Okay. Have a good day, guys. Thanks. Have a great weekend. We love hearing from you, Howard. We're going to go to our next caller, and her name is Kelly. She's from Port St. Lucy, and she is a first-time caller. Good morning, Kelly. Good morning. Happy Saturday. Welcome. You've just won yourself $50. Woo-hoo. Yeah, woo-woo. What can we do for you? I actually have two questions. The first one is maintenance. I have a 2011 Infinity G37S. I have factory brakes on it, and they squeak all the time.

Why is that? Probably when they were installed, maybe they didn't get the proper clips in place or the lubrication on the back of the pads. It might also just be a, they might have been installed wrong or something. I would stop in at a dealership, haven't checked out. Aren't they the original factory brakes?

Well, if they're original factory pads, they might just be worn right out. Might be time for new ones. No, they've been squealing ever since I got them. I had the dealership install them. Oh, you're all there, okay. a dealer installed. I was right. Yeah, of course. Yeah, I'd go back there and I would say to the technician or the manager, hey, go for a ride with me and let me show you this noise and say, this is not normal and you

need to fix this. Okay. Polite persistence. And then, yep, there you go. And then the second question I have is with the new cars, if, from what I understand, uh, at least the, The top three, you know, GM, Chrysler, and Ford, up there in Michigan and all over, have thousands and thousands of brand new vehicles sitting on the lot or in fields, if you will, waiting for a chip. When these parts arrive and they're still making cars, how is that going to affect the price of these cars that have been sitting there for years and the ones that are brand new coming off the assembly line.

That's a great question. Something I haven't thought about. I've read about those cars sitting there. You know, you don't like a car to sit unattended and uncared for a long period of time. Car dealers experienced this back in the day when we had too many cars in stock. You had to watch a car that would get off in a corner somewhere, and you turn around one day checking your computer inventory, and you see a car that came in a year and a half ago

and nobody sold it. And that leads to all sorts of problems that Rick could probably elaborate on when I'm not going to ask him, but you don't want to buy a car that just has been sitting there for a year and a half. So I'm glad you brought that up. You brought something to my attention

that we'll probably have to bring to our listeners' attention when they're buying a car. When those microchips come in and they put it at a GM Ford product and ship it to you. I hope they have some sort of a check sheet they go through and re-check those cars. For one thing, you know the battery's dead.

So you might have a problem with the fuel if the fuels have been sitting there for... Rusty brakes. Rusty brakes. Old gas, dried out seals and gaspets. Well, what about rust underneath? Yeah, rust underneath all the cars, you know, because they're sitting in fields, right?

Up north where we have snow and ice and all of that. Rats. And they've been over... for a year or so. The other thing would be your warranty is typically three years 36, right? Well, that doesn't start until you take to...

Is that going to be extended? Yeah, they... Right, but I mean, now I've got a two-year-old car. Yeah, all warranties start from the... Data first use. From the data delivery. I understand that.

I understand that, but I'm buying a two-year-old car. Yes, you are. You know? So, I would have to assume they're going to discount these the vehicles at some point or give an extended warranty or something to be able to compete with the brand new cars coming off the assembly line. Good point.

Good point. If they disclose it. And transparency is the problem. And we'll do a little research on that. Maybe a steward, Rick knows now, but if a car is built other than the year, obviously the year make, is there any way you can tell from the VIN of the month it was made? There's generally a sticker on the door jam. When you open the driver's front door, there's a sticker there, and usually right at the very top, it will say the month and year that that car was produced.

There you go. And this is the reason I love callers and Kelly. That was one of the greatest questions we had asked because it hasn't been asked before and it's going to kick in very soon. And it's very important. A lot of people should be looking at that. When these cars come in, they'll be shiny and they'll be on the showroom floor. And you'll think of them as almost a new car. I'll have a new car smell.

You just got to find out when it was built. And if it was built three years ago, you're, you know, it's a problem's waiting to happen. So thank you very much. Great call. Hey, Kelly. I have to commend you. You are an educated consumer. I'm going to keep you on the line.

You know why? I want to get back to your breaks. Let me ask you this question. Does your brake squeal or squeak when you back the car up, when you go forward? Does it matter? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You know, some of these components become, for lack of another word, I'm going to say, loose,

and it may be a simple fix for you to check out, and they just might need to tighten up the system. I think, well, then into Ricks. I'm not a mechanic. But maybe Rick can say something to this. Yeah, she's going to take it to the dealer because... Oh, she would have to, definitely, to check it out. Probably a problem. Yeah.

What do you say, Rick? I'd stick we'll go back to the place where she had them done. Yeah. Show the noise to the manager and say, please fix this. Yeah. Again, polite persistence. My point is it's probably a... simple fix because these components become loose over time yeah so anyway Kelly I want to get

back to thanking you thanking you for giving us a call this morning and congratulations on your $50 and please continue to listen to us and spread the word tell your lady friends we're building a platform here all right well thank you very much I appreciate it you're welcome Kelly we're going to go to Marty who too is a well he's a regular caller from West Palm Beach. Good morning. How are you, Marty? Good. How are you? Great. I got to give you a little quick Tesla story. Last Sunday night, I met my daughter and son and everybody. It was three different cars, and my daughter had their Tesla there with her two kids. and when we were going home, before we went home,

her 15-year-old son noticed that the tire was flat on the right rear. And what they went in the car, and of course, the thing showed that it was a flat, you know, flat or low pressure. Well, apparently no Tesla's have a spare tire. Well, I didn't know that. Mine doesn't. Yeah, none of them, though, except I guess you could order one, but 100% don't have one, I'd say. It's a very common trend these days. We call them up, and they said, well, I said, can you come out and just plug the tire?

They said, no, we don't plug the tire. So they said, we have to tow the, tow the car in. Well, to make a long story short, Tesla's tow truck or whoever they hire, their tow truck broke down. So this was after an hour waiting for that truck. They said, it'll be another hour. So my daughter said, look, my husband will have to call you tomorrow, which would have been Monday, and see what they can do. Well, apparently what happens is, I didn't know this, on a regular car, you can't do this, but on Tesla's, your phone can start the car, open the car, and everything.

Yes. So from West Palm, he called. They towed the car, he unlocked it. He didn't have to go back to the boat gun. They unlocked the car and everything, and they towed it into Okachobe Boulevard. And the bottom line was the Tesla place on Okachobi plugged the tire. Even though they said they don't plug tires.

That's interesting. Yeah. So it's not a good idea to plug tires, is it, Rick? No, definitely not. So I'm glad you brought that to our attention. I hope Tesla's a little embarrassed now, and the one on Okochobee Boulevard in West Palm Beach should be, and you've got some good advice from the one person,

but plug might work for a long time, but it might not. And when you talk about tires, you don't want to do a mite, you want to be a sure thing, and that should have been fixed properly. So thanks very much for the call, Marty. You know, I've said before, I'm a Tesla fan, I'm an Elon Musk fan, but I've said before that the Tesla has got a lot of faults, and the quality of my Tesla is not what a Honda or Toyota, or for that matter, a GM, a lot of cars hire in terms of fit and finish.

I'm a little disappointed. Sure. Earl, could I just ask Rick a question? Please. Is there any technical difference for towing a Tesla versus towing on a regular car not really to just have to go on a flatbed and pull it up on the flatbed in neutral is all you're talking about towing it on the ground oh to it no I would put it on a trailer okay yeah I didn't know how Tesla did it but I thought I

was gonna call the automobile club for my daughter but I figured maybe it's better that a Tesla tows it, you know, that there's no, they don't say the automobile club guy did something wrong. Now, I, all four off the ground on a Tesla, all four off the ground, especially if it's got the dual motor system where all the wheels have the electric motor power, all four off the ground. Okay, yeah, and I don't know how they did it, but apparently the car's still running, so they must have done it right at it.

Okay, Barney, thanks very much for the call. Okay, yeah. Have a good day, everybody. You too. Right here and from you. We're going to go to Miami. We've got Angel on the line. It's been a while since we heard from Angel. Good morning.

Good morning, too. First of all, thank you for providing new information you guys provide every week on the car industry. And my question is you guys is I'm looking to get into the tour of business. And I want to know if I should go with a new or used car. Thank you for your time. I think you still have inflated prices on both, Angel. And you've got, in general, I would recommend a late model used car over a new car period. But today's crazy market, you really have to shop and look at prices and compare.

It's just a bad time to buy a car. I recommend you don't buy a car unless you have to sentence me like you have to. I shop both. There are people out there paying more for a used car than they would have to pay for a new car. And vice versa. I mean, it's just supplying demand with the supply line shortage and this whole COVID thing is upside down. So decide what you want. your make model, chop new and used, and go with your best buy.

Try to, if you're buying new, try to get as close to MSRP as you can. You're not going to get a car below MSRP. And if you're buying a used car, compare the price on the used car that you're buying to what the new one would cost. If you're going to buy a used car, be sure that you're going to save yourself a couple thousand dollars over what you would pay for a new car. and but you can't make a decision today like you would normally make if this were three years ago angel I'd say buy a good certified late model used car I can't

make that recommendation the only advantage now is you can get it faster yeah exactly okay thank you okay thank you Angel call again appreciate it very much okay okay yeah we're all cleared up with the with the collars right now I think we have some volume going over there. We get some texts, and Amory has one waiting for us, and it's very topical, and it's something that we wanted to talk about on this show. And Amory says, good morning, usually misbehavior at car dealerships. It doesn't attract any notice, but this week is the exception.

Some Florida dealerships were spotlighted in the news. On Wednesday, Palm Beach Post reported that two Napleton auto dealerships in Palm Beach County are among eight nationwide that will pay a total of $10 million after federal regulators accused them of gouging car buyers by charging hitting fees and discriminating against black customers. And it's the largest settlement ever worked out by the Federal Trade Commission with a car dealer. It was signed last week to end the lawsuit. The FTC filed against Ed Napleton Automotive Group. And like she says, two of the dealerships named in the nationwide groups were right here in North Lake Boulevard,

and we have mystery shopped them several times. And trust us, we will be back to mystery shopping. So the gist of it is that they were accused of overcharged. all their customers for unwanted fees and hidden things, and they're charging their black customers even more than they're overcharging everybody. So it's a big mess for them, and it doesn't look good, but we knew it because we saw every time we mystery shopped them. So Ann Marie has some questions for us.

She says, one, is the $10 million fine? Is that just the cost of doing business? Two, can Napleton deduct this fine as a business expense? I don't know. And number three, if their alleged behavior was so bad that it caught the attention to the Federal Trade Commission, where was the Florida Attorney General when it was going on right under her nose? And let's address that. She has another question, but let's talk about her questions.

So it was a $10 million fine. It's just, in other words, did they make enough money screwing people that the $10 million fine is just, eh, just the price to do business? Let's talk about it after we watch her clip. But we happen to have that clip on video, and we're going to run that, and you can watch the commercial online if you have YouTube or Facebook, and then we'll get into the answer that Anne-Marie asked. Very, very good questions. All right. A major car dealership chain with two locations in our area has reached a multi-million dollar settlement with federal authorities. The feds say this company ripped off customers with fees for add-on.

they didn't ask for and charged black customers more for financing. CBS 12's Al Pfeffley has the latest. I would think twice about buying at a place like this. Why? Because of what FTC case shows. Napled and Auto Group has agreed to pay $10 million to settle a lawsuit for illegally charging black customers more for financing a car, as well as illegally tacking on fees for products that buyers didn't want,

like payment insurance and paint protection. The FTC says these illegal fees cost Napleton customers thousands of dollars extra in some cases. Napleton has two dealerships in Palm Beach County that are part of this case. Napleton North Lake Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram in Lake Park and Napleton North Lake Kia in North Palm Beach, where we were told a manager would speak with us. The dealership manager here, could we speak to him? We have no comment on anything. If you have a question or anything, because this is the contact person.

That's it. Do you have your leadership deceiving people? Don't question. Don't come in. What do you have to say about these allegations? I have nothing to say, no comment. This is how you treat customers? Call that person.

We got the same treatment at Napleton's Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram dealership. I'm from CDS 12 News. And my name is Al Peffley and we're doing it. Is that off? No, it's on. Well, it needs to be off. Why is that? Because you didn't even ask permission yet.

ask permission yet. Well, we're asking permission. We'd like to talk to someone from your dealership about the story that came out. The Better Business Bureau says car buyers need to be cautious at any dealership. Well, we always advise consumers is to look at anything before they sign it. I know it can be tedious. There's a lot of paperwork that goes into buying a car, but you have to look at the final bill and what the fees are for. Napleton did provide a written statement which said in part, quote, we vehemently deny any wrongdoing. The Napleton family has been in business for over 90 years selling and servicing millions of vehicles. We're proud of our trusted, time-tested reputation and relationship with our customers

and are fully committed to transparency in all of our dealings. That was our Al Peflay reporting. That $10 million is a record-setting judgment against Napleton, according to the FTC. We're told most of the 10 million will be used to pay Napleton's customers who were overcharged. All right. I want to volunteer to be their media consultant. Well, I got to thank Channel 12 for stepping up the plate. Channel 5 and Channel 25 and nobody else that I know of came up.

It takes a lot of nerve for a local TV station to go after a local car dealer, and they don't do it. And it takes a lot of nerve for the Florida Attorney General to do what she should have done a long time ago. Now it had to be the, I guess it was the Ohio and the other Attorney General from out of state. Have you seen anything in the Palm Beach Post? Nothing in the Palm Beach Post. Absolutely. You won't. Oh, I think there was. That was.

Was it? Yeah, Emery cited the article in the Palm Beach Post. Yeah. Yeah, she sent me the article. Oh, really? Oh, okay. My apologies. Let me tell Kevin to hold on. He's been holding from New York. What page was that on, Stu?

The point is, the point is, and we'll go to the caller in just a second, you've seen now exposed the Napleton group in this area. We've shopped them for years, and they're on the bottom of our recommended list. They finally got nailed out of state by an Attorney General who wanted to do her job. Actually, it wasn't the Attorney General. It was the Federal Trade Commission. So the federal government had to do the job of the state, and in this case here, they got exposed. So now what is Ashley Moody going to do? Now that it's public, you know, the world is watching you, Ashley Moody, and it isn't just Napleton.

It's a lot of dealers doing the same thing as Naples. Napleton is the worst, I'll tell you that. But there are a lot of dealers that do exactly the same thing as Napleton, and they go untouched. The federal government shouldn't have to do the work of the state. government, especially the state attorney general. So we'll come back to this topic. I don't want to keep Kevin holding. And Ashley Moody, this has been going on for far too long, and we need your help, please.

We're going to get to Kevin, who's holding from Buffalo, New York. Good morning, Kevin. Good morning. I always enjoy listening to your show because you all empower learning, and that's very good. And you can keep me at hold for as long as you want because my information is not as great just what you presented in the audience. Thank you. All right.

I have a question of an 11-year-old car. My right headlight, after about nine years, burned out, so I replaced it. After about six months, it went out again. After about a year, within two years, I've had to replace the headlight bulb on the right side twice. And now we're going to replace it the third time because it's burned out. But the left one doesn't seem to burn out. What can be the problem, Rick? Hmm.

I'd put the left one over on the right side, put a new one on the left. left side. I'm just kidding, I'm just kidding. It's something weird that I don't really understand about light bulbs. This is something that has driven me crazy for years. If everything is working perfectly, the light bulb should use all the voltage that goes to it. And the negative side, the ground side should have perfect, no voltage used on that side of the circuit. And yet, it seems that older cars, when you replace a bulb that's been in there for a long time, suddenly the new ones just don't seem to last. And it may just be the planned obsolescence that they're putting into these new bulbs.

The best I can say is just maybe have a mechanic check, make sure that you don't have any excessive resistance on the circuit. But other than that, you just kind of got to keep trying with maybe a higher quality bulb. Or Google it. Or Google it. Okay. Google it. No.

Somebody out there probably has better information than me. When Rick put it pretty succinctly, he said, you know, here he is. He's been doing this for 25 years more. And he says, evidently, when a headlight goes out eventually, they last a long time. And when a headlamp goes out, you replace it with a new headlamp. And that's where you start having problems. And he doesn't understand why. why yeah one thing to be careful of though make sure when you're putting the new bulb in

don't touch the glass with your fingers because the oils on your fingers can actually cause the heat of the bulb to concentrate in certain areas and that can cause them to burn out earlier that I've heard so avoid avoid touching it with your bare skin that's what it says on the instructions what about dielectric grease that hurt it uh dielectric grease is actually meant to help keep water from getting into anything, and it's actually a special grease that will not conduct electricity of any sort. So that actually can't hurt having a little bit on the connectors when you put it back together. Thank you. I just like to make a couple of comments. I like when Ann Marie calls, and she mentioned the $10 million. What is the

total sales of Daibleton auto group across the country? Good point. That's a 10 million is chump change. These guys, he's got like 25 dealerships. He's huge. Yeah, in the 30s maybe. And, yeah, I mean, just a small dealership can have tens of millions of dollars in sales every year. Yeah, pocket change. And I hear a couple of comments on, like, electric vehicles. I worked for a company, maybe 15 years ago we bought a couple of electric raft cores.

You might have had 30 miles of range with it. If you put the heater on, it was less. Look at how the technology has changed in the last 10, 20 years in electric vehicles. You know, 300 plus miles. And that technology is going to keep involved. probably getting better and better. And the last thing about charging stations, our local parks have charging stations if they're not the fast one.

So people are bringing their electric cars to the charging stations and even there overnight to charge because it's free. So that's another option of getting a car charged for free. Yeah. People are creative. Yeah, they actually call them, I know a Tesla on their app, they call them destination charging. It's a nice way of saying they're slow chargers.

So in other words, you go there, like say you're on a road trip, you stop at a hotel, and then use their charger with their destination charger overnight. So there's all sorts of ways. And Earl's talked about this a lot, is charging at home is a thing a lot of people don't consider. When you charge it overnight, you're basically have a gas station at home, and you don't have to really worry about it that much. It's not that bad. By the way, you do, on most of these charging networks and the apps, if somebody is parking somewhere excessively, you can report them on the app. And I think, because we have charge point stations at the dealership, and we have, you know, administrative control.

If somebody were to park there and charge, we could turn it off remotely or charge them. You know, we could, the owners of the stations have a lot of control. Sounds great. Kevin, before I let you go, I googled the question. And here's a suspective problem. Vibration, it would occur to me and Rick would know more than I. But you got an original factory lamp and it was installed at the factory, obviously. You drive the car and assuming it was done exactly right because it was done by professionals when the car was built.

Now you replace the lamp, a human being is replacing that lamp. It's possible that the installation and the tightening and whatever else Rick would know more than I, if you don't put it in there firmly, vibration will cause that filament to burn out early. That can certainly have a big difference in it. So that might be it. You might try, I don't know what you try. You have someone that knows what they're doing, say, I think it's a vibration problem. I'm putting a new lamp in there.

Be sure it's put in properly, so it won't have any undue vibration. And maybe even try a little bit of that dielectric grease on the fitting of the bulb where it sits in to absorb some of that vibration. Yeah, good point. Just a thin layer. Well, I think the operator is the biggest problem. We like to hit potholes in the road, so that's the biggest problem. Yeah, good. Thank you, Kevin.

Thank you, Kevin. That was a good point that you made because we're driving. We don't realize these roads that we're on that, you know, have a impact on our vehicles. Things become loose. They become, you know, all this vibration. So there's a lot of things that happen in between. 877-960-99-60. And don't forget, ladies, $50 for the next new female caller.

Give us a call. 960 9960 and you can text us at 772-4976530 and don't forget your anonymous feedback.com now back to Rick got a couple here first one is from Kyle in Pennsylvania he says a little confusing way to wrote it but I think what he's saying is if it's 2023 before to edit inventories get back to about 50% of what they were before, Toyota will still have no reason to offer rebates. He thinks it could be as many as two years before you could get a new car for under MSRP. But Earl, I think you've said that you don't think you're ever going to see cars under MSRP again.

Well, I said we might not. I think this is a watershed moment in our auto retailing history for a lot of reasons. and the new normal is what they'll call it. I mean, we have the pandemic, and we have this, we're now in Looney Tunes with the cars thousands of dollars on MSRP. I think embarrassment and pressure from the manufacturers, Attorney General's, hopefully, certainly by the Federal Trade Commission, will keep it from getting too crazy.

And I think we'll come back to something like Apple stores where you do buy cars at MSRP, but they're reasonable MSRPs and their values. we don't care when we buy an iPhone or a Mac computer. We don't care if it's high price because it's a great value for the money. I mean, I shouldn't say high price. We don't care if it's MSRP.

We don't care if it's what the printed, you know, a loaf of bread. The things we buy typically are... That's MSRP. MSRP. Cars have inflated MSRPs, and so that starts the horse trading, and then they had hidden packs in the invoices, which proliferated the horse trading

and unfairly into set advertising and trade practices and everything else. So I think when the smoke settles, you're going to have fixed prices on new cars and it will be a fairer price than ever before. It's kind of like what we pioneered. Yeah, exactly. I have more bad news, though, for consumers,

and this just came in, well, was it announced on the 7th by Toyota, but we just got the email. Now, manufacturers are going over MSRP because we just got our MSRP increase rates. So starting in May, model 2022, most of the toilets are going up anywhere from $250 to $700 on the MSRP side, which means the price is going up to consumers that much. But that's still good. Listen, whatever, if you post a price on a product, automobile we're talking about,

and you advertise the price and you sell it for the price it's advertised for, that empowers you the consumer to shop and compare. So if you are going to buy a Chevrolet, you have the MSRP, and you can go to another dealer. If he'll give you a discount of MSRP, you'll buy it from him. If he won't, you'll buy it from somebody else. So this is what, all we want to have on our new vehicles is a price that you can shop and compare whether and if you don't have a price that you can shop and compare then that's where

the shenanigans begin and the deception begins great advice we're going to go back to the phones and john has been holding uh thank you for holding john good morning hey good morning the just on ed and the people who sit at the chargers and they're done charging I do know that at the Palm Beach Outlet malls, that's local for all of us. When your car is done charging, there's a surcharge that kicks in after like 20 seconds or something where they start charging you extra. And that's to keep people from charging their car and then go shopping for several hours. And that's one of the things that's built into those supercharging systems.

because we use it. And the other thing is we're happy with our Tesla 3 round trip from West Palm here to Orlando. The total cost was $22. Wow. And so we're very happy about that. And then a lot of times we get the naysayers. They want to know, and I think you've got. talked about it before.

You know, what did the people with electric car do when a hurricane comes and there's no electricity? Well, I have a generator, and my generator has the 240 outlet, and I just charge the car with the generator. Sure. And that. And then same thing, the local

Wawa, because of the law of states, they have to be able to provide gas, you know, they have to have the pump's working. The pumps working. The pumps forcing and all that. That all takes electricity. Even during the hurricane, you can still take your car up to Wawa and charge you. If the charging stations are on the grid with the pumps, you know, as far as electric.

But, you know, home generators will charge a TV. Sure. Because they all have the 240 outlet. You just got to make sure you have the components to plug it in. Exactly, yeah. And South Florida used to have a huge amount of hurricane-related power. our problems. And a lot of the, you know, you've got a lot of places got generators now. I'm betting a lot of these charging stations that you're using for your car have generator

backups, especially in South Florida. And I don't think that's going to be an issue. Nope. Nope. But that's what the naysairs, you know, that. Oh, yeah. Well, it's like every time we have technological improvements, there's also, and, you know, I'm really one of them. I'm going to miss combustion engines. I think about them. I mean, you know, I grew up in the 50s and the 60s and I just love the muscle cars and the four on the floor and the three-two-barrel carbs, dual clods. I mean, but you know, when I think about it, you know, electric car, it doesn't make, the only thing it doesn't have is the cool sound. So you could probably buy yourself some sort of an audio system that makes you.

for Tesla sound like a 55 Chevrolet. You've got greased lightning without the thunder. Right. Thank you, John. Great hearing. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you. Great hearing from you, John.

A77960-9960, or you can text us at 772-497-30. And don't forget, you can go to Earl on Cars, and you can sign up for Earl's vigilantes, and you can help us out, and you can help a lot of people in your community. and take advantage of that. Also, we need volunteers to, you know, help some of seniors get through the, you know, internet. Not all of us can, you know, maneuver our way around there. So go to Erlon cars and you can get all that information.

I think Stu's got some texts for us. Oh, yeah. Amory texted back just to let us know that the Palm Beach Post story on Napleton appeared on page 5B. A little buried. Okay. That's why I didn't see it. It was on the auto news, too, this week's Auto News. That's a trade journal for the manufacturers, a dealer, on page 40.

Yeah, I didn't get a copy of the Palm Beach Post, but I do want to see how far away they place it from Napleton's ad. Like, maybe that's like the... Exactly. I don't think Naples are advertising in the Pompish Post. I don't get the Pompage Post. You know, I haven't seen their ad in the Palm Beach Post, and boy, I'll tell you what, they're heavy on advertisement and always have been. That's why I alluded earlier to the Palm Beach Post, and I'll tell you what, they're heavy on advertisement and always have been. That's why I alluded earlier to the...

the protection of Napleton, you know, but here we are, it's on TV. Man, I'm telling you on TV, that spot that we played, the way they handled the reporter Al Pfeffley coming in, I mean, that's just, that's base 101. You don't look bad, you're on camera, you automatically, you start off looking like a criminal when you start putting your hand over the camera, tell them to turn it off. Or you cover your head in here. Yeah, what's going on here? You know, they're not, you know, they're just, I'm picking on them, they're not, they weren't

hire it to do that. They're just a salespeople and greeters and things like that. Yeah, we're talking about the Naples and $10 million fine by the Federal Trade Commission, if you just tuned in. And Daepleon is one of the largest car dealers in the country, multiple stores. And finally, the Federal Trade Commission went after him because the local attorney generals like Ashley Moody don't have the courage to do it because they'd be losing contributions from the Florida Automobile Deluge Association. And we finally have the FTC, 10 million dollar record record fine unfortunately a drop in the bucket for a large multi-million dollars yeah i don't care how big you are that's that's 10 million let me tell you hey listen

you know what car dealers are making right now and uh i guarantee you that the napleton auto group makes 200 million dollars a year probably yeah so so for a 10 million dollar fine and ann marie asked can they write it off i don't think so but who cares that doesn't matter you're making 200 million here here's 10 million I make it 12 here this is for your trouble right give 12 million he did that just to look cool yeah but at least I tell you what hurts is what we're doing now and what channel 12 did and what that customer said on TV right in front of the dealership I mean an Ableton customer says I don't think I should buy a car here that's what hurts and that's a publicity

hurts and that's the reason the media needs to do do your duty out there the media hey channel 25 channel 5 why didn't you run it if you did run it I didn't see it, and I haven't heard about, only Channel 12. Is that WPEC? And also... Yes, it is. I want to give them credit, WPEC, Channel 12, and if they had the courage, you are... Courage, exactly, courage.

And thank you, Ian Marie, for that information on the Palm Beach Post. That had to be a tiny article, because I didn't see it, and I was looking for it. We're going to go back to the phones, and we're going to talk to Charles in North Palm Beach. Good morning, Charles. Good morning. I've got a couple of questions about internal combustion engines and electric motors and then Carfax. So first question is, if a car is being built, is the internal combustion engine more expensive than the electric motor? I would say yes. I'd say, you know, once the cars, electric cars get to scale, the electric cars, the electric cars get to scale, the electric motor is the simplest thing you've ever seen.

It's just a magnet with a wheel running around. Yeah, I think for the electric cars, the big expenses to batteries. Battery, yeah. Because of the rare earth elements required to build the batteries. And those prices are coming down, too, because they won't require the same rare earth elements, and there'll be new forms and types of it. But eventually, the electric motor and battery will be cheaper to manufacture. The reason the combustion engine is, is in.

inexpensive as is now is because the economy of scale. There are so many of them built and the investment in the tools to build them and the volume is so high. It got the price down. Same thing will happen with the electric motor and with the battery. Very, very interesting. Yeah, I hadn't thought about the battery costs because I was just thinking that electric motors are much more simple. And with all of the many, many parts and internal combustion engine that, you know, there ought to be a significant savings when you go to electric motors, but it's motors and batteries.

My next question is about Carfax, and where does the information come from? Does that come from police reports, or does that come from individual body shops? How does that work? All the information harvested. It comes from the insurance companies largely for the collision information. And for repair information, it comes from the car dealerships. Most dealers today, we do. I think most other dealers do, give authorization to patch into our computer

to take all the information on every van we repair and what was done to it. Insurance companies all participate. And so it's just a man. Yeah. Law enforcement. Yeah. Anything. So you have a lot of cooperation.

And Carfax was smart enough to get in on the ground floor. They have all that data at one point, and it's an amazing company, and they're not perfect, though. And you can get bad information. Every now and then, we get bad reports from Carfax because anything by human beings has mistakes. I'm on their site. There's a lot more. I knew this, but this, remember, so auctions report frame damage and structural damage, insurance companies, salvage auctions, automotive recyclers, rental fleet companies, state inspection stations, fire departments, manufacturers, law enforcement agencies,

the list keeps going, so they have a huge network of information. They wrote the book, they got on the ground floor, and they're invaluable tool for everybody. Well, I'm just guessing, though, it's a fairly minor repair that, say, from view of your deductible, you simply pay out of pocket and you go to a local body shop. I'm just wondering if that ever hits the airwaves. Probably not. That wouldn't be there unless the Carfax had a deal with the body shop. By their computer, yeah.

Yeah, by computer. In other words, that's what they do with mechanical repairs. They probably do it with Body Shop repairs, too, if the Body Shop will cooperate. I don't see why they wouldn't. I think Carfax must have some sort of arrangement, whether they pay them or give them an advertising or something. There's a quid pro-cold kind of a thing, I'm sure, between Carfax and all the data suppliers. Extended warranty companies, let them know about major repairs.

Yeah, exactly. Thank you very much. It's usual. Great information. Well, that's a great call, Gerald. Thank you. We're going to go to Glenn. Good morning, Glenn.

Good morning, all. Welcome. I haven't called in quite some time since you turned me down as a first-time female call. I got over that. I have a comment on the Napleton affair. I'm from St. Louis, and we have a couple of Napleson viewers up here. It won't come out as to St. Louis.

I think it's St. Peter's, which is a city right outside of Main Town, St. Louis. And it's your typical business response to settling a lawsuit where they settled for $10 million but denied any wrongdoing, admitted to no wrongdoing. Earl, my comment is, if you sue me for $10 million and I settle, I was guilty.

Yeah. No, that's all I've got, sir. Yeah, people know that, and most people know that. It's, you know, it's a cop-out. The rationale, and I've settled lawsuits as a businessman, one of the reasons, a legitimate reason for settling a lawsuit, is that sometimes litigating the lawsuit costs more than the settlement. And the attorneys know that. And, you know, if I were to do another show, after we get all the car dealers, to be honest, it would be Earl Stewart on attorneys. Oh, sir, on the law.

But what happens is there's attorneys out there that make their money. Here's that way they make their money. They get a frivolous lawsuit. They get a lawsuit that has no merit. And they represent the plaintiff. And they say to, they call the accused company, car dealer maybe, and say, listen, I'm going to sue you. I'm the city on the Florida Unfair and the Tsepe Trade Practices Act or whatever and that means you're going to be responsible for the attorney's fees

and your attorney's fees are probably going to be $50,000 I'll settle it today for $10,000 now what I used to say screw you I'm not going to settle I'm right you're wrong and I would stand up for myself and I would litigate I did that a few times it got costly. And then I started having my insurance company get mad at me because I've had my insurance company say, Earl, we're going to settle this. I said, I don't want to settle it. I'm right. I didn't do it. And they say, well, we're going to settle it anyway because in your insurance agreement to cover you, we get to decide when to settle. And I can see their point. They don't want to pay $50,000 for me to cover me in defending me when they can pay the plaintiff's lawyer.

$10,000 to settle. So it isn't always a confession when people settle. In Napleton's case, I'm sure it was a confession because we know Napleton's Motus Imprandi. And we also want $10 million would be an awful lot of money in litigation. But in this case here, but your point is well taken. And I think, and Glenn, I think you're right. They shouldn't have settled and they should have, they should have gone to the man on it and lost and been branded for who they are. Do you, I'd hate to give you too much credit, but do you think the mystery shopping has anything to do with this?

I hope so. I'd love to think so. I mean, you know, we wonder all the time, how much good are we doing. We know the dealers listen. We know Napleton of all dealers listens. And we've targeted them as Numero uno bandit as long as I can remember and they've never had a good mystery shopping report

so I hope so it would sure make us all be very happy if we thought we had something to do with it but thanks for bringing it up congratulations I think you've got a lot of dealers looking over their shoulder thank you Glenn I appreciate that I agree Glenn thank you we're going to go straight to the roadrunner roadrunner Steve

good morning good morning everybody. Hey, Earl, does an electric car sound like this? No. Of course not. Of course not. Now, why don't we go back to basics with steam cars? Water power.

You can get water everywhere. You don't need electric? Stanley Stammer. You know, I have to do an old story now, Steve. It was my father. He was born in 1992 and passed away in 1976. 77? 77.

And he's a pioneer. And he told me up until, you know, when he was retired from the car business, he said the best engine ever made was a steam engine. And if someone could solve the problem of how do you get enough water to carry around, they'd probably be using steam engine. today the power of vehicles but it was amazing acceleration amazing top speed a lot of good things about it you got to get there okay hold on yeah well of course I mean and plus I came out with a new invention for the electric car in case so you run out of electricity what's that it's you get a plastic gas can and you put an extension cord in it and plug it in.

And then you close the top, right? When the meter says full, this way, when you run out of power, just take that extension cord out, put it back in a can, and put you calm into it. Perfect. All right.

Can we sell this? You read a patent, I'd say. You should have never said that over the radio. People would be scrambling to steal your patent. I'm rich with good health. How's that sound? the best kind of wealth. Steve, you're the greatest, I'll tell you.

What happened with this North Lake Kia stuff here? Oh, boy. They were in the paper about ripping people off charging high finance charges. It was in Palm Beach Post. Yeah, that's the Napleson lawsuits, Steve. I don't know if you were listening earlier, but the Federal Trade Commission hit him with a settlement of $10 million. They sued them for that, and two of the stores, the one you referred to,

Also, the Chrysler Premoth store, a Chrysler Jeep store, I should say, for Naples on North Lake Boulevard. Both of them were in that suit, like 15 or 20 dealerships, that he settled a lawsuit for $10 million, a record settlement with the FTC. But does anybody get fired, or they just get a lawsuit? Well, they get the money. The money goes to the consumers. I don't know if anybody got fired for it. Probably, Matt. Probably got promoted.

The one I think they probably fired The one that got caught They didn't fire the people for doing it It would enable them when they catch you They fire you Right Was that the store pigeon or not the store pigeon In fact they caught their service manager a couple years ago

Yeah the whistleblower The last guy hired gets fired You know that deal That's right Last one in the first one out Yeah okay everybody have a good day Thanks for the talk I can say, you know, here's something, let me bring up quickly because I know Rick will appreciate this.

We're talking about ways to keep electric cars going, and he used to tell us, Rick told us about a place in Sweden or Germany, someplace that had the power, charged a car on the road. Purdue University, my old alma mater, has a project going now, and they have test roads in Michigan, Florida, and Indiana, where they're putting the infrastructure in the road that has the basic charging capability as you drive along the highway, it charge the electric cars. That's really cool, and that's almost as good as Steve's, the Roadrunner's extension cord. But it'll just, you never have to worry about charging or batteries. It just keeps uncharging.

So that'll happen one day. Anything you can imagine will happen one day. Yeah, I think we're going to look back and laugh at the, the time when we were worried about, like, range on electric vehicles. Batteries are going to get better, and a million other solutions are going to solve it. All right. How are we doing on the phone? We're all finished, and we're going to get back to Stu, where he has a lot of text messages.

Just a few, not that many. Here's a really interesting question that came in and says, Hello, what do you think of the general work culture and the car dealership industry and what can be done to improve it, and what would you recommend people going into this career? And just real quick, I mean, speaking about car dealerships, not manufacturing, generally it's pretty bad. I mean, just historically, in sales, car salespeople work long hours. There is a kind of a brutal culture of pressure.

You know, what we see on our mystery shopping ports, and we see the pressure being put on customers, a lot of the kind of rolls downhill from the dealers down through management. There's a lot of pressure to hit quotas and hit certain numbers. So generally, I wouldn't recommend people. I think car dealers that do it better look at not putting their employees into positions where they're in conflicts with their customers. Well, there's a footnote that during the past two years.

That hasn't been the case. It's a seller's market. And so the car salesmen basically are taking orders, and they're not working in the long hours they used to or had to. But that'll be over. about in the grand scheme of things. You know, selling cars like being a waiter in a restaurant

or a waitress in a restaurant. You, long hours and a lot of hard work. But that's all changing. You know, we're going to, this is evolving. And the follow-up question, in light of Amazon Starbucks workers starting to unionize this year, could this happen in the car dealership industry?

It used to, as then the unions went out, the unions could come back in, it all depends. It's just, it all depends. If the employers treat their employees fair, you don't have a union. If they try to take advantage of the employees, you do have a union. I like the idea of unions because they keep the employers honest, they keep the businesses honest. If you, unions became unions back 50, 60, 70 years ago, 80 years ago because of the terrible way employees were treated. And the unions forced the employers to treat them right.

So, you know, I think it's a happy balance we have today. Without unions, I think the employers would be maybe leaning on the employees more than they should. Great. Here's another one. This is really good. It says a couple of questions. I ordered a new Toyota Corolla Cross about six weeks ago. At the time, the estimated wait time was three to four months.

Recently got an update, only to be informed that the wait time is now six to nine months. And I discovered that there was a production slowdown at the Toyota factory in Huntsville, Alabama. They went from building 5,100 crosses a month to zero. Yikes. What's wrong in Huntsville? Well, I can tell you, Huntsville, and it's back online, and they've rebooted the production. But it had to do a supply chain issues, particularly from Southeast Asia.

There's COVID, believe it or not, is still a factor over there, Vietnam, Malaysia, and so there was China and but a lot of the parts coming there from Malaysia and Vietnam in particular. So that slowed down, they pumped it back up, but this is happening every single time. It's so strained that any change can really affect a lot in the supply chain. Talk about COVID. Nancy was telling me on the car coming in. She was reading, I think, in the newspaper that in China now, the COVID is so bad that the auto manufacturers are making their employees sleep in the manufacturing plants. Yeah, they're building these bubbles for their employees where they can eat, where they can sleep, where they stay there. They just never leave. We were thinking about putting bubbles in the dealership a couple of years ago. Just kidding. And the other question says this is about the Krola Cross.

they have on order. So if my vehicle doesn't arrive until November, while I get a 21 or a 2023, the answer to the question, you'll get whatever the year that's being produced at the time. It very well could be a 2023 at the time. And in most cases, that doesn't cause a problem, but as we'll get into potential pitfalls later. I also say, if the hybrid version of the Coral Cross is supposed to be available in December, shouldn't I order the hybrid version now instead?

Yes, because if you wait. until December, it could be another six months or a year after that for that to get it. So order now, and even it's not being made, you'll most likely get it. Let me jump in just quickly. I know I'm interrupting, but we talked about this earlier. This blog, Avoid Six Pitfalls, ordering a new car. So it's just coming out. It's online now, earluncars.com, and it will be in the Florida Weekly, in the hometown news.

It'll be also on Facebook. We post it there. It's particularly important if you're going to order a car, and you should order a car, instead of buy one of a dealer's stock. There's a lot of things that the dealer is doing now. When you order a car, you want to be sure you have yourself a commitment from that dealer, especially on price. And if you go into a car dealership today and say, order me a Chevrolet Corvette, and they say, okay, and you give them a deposit and you go home, you don't have much control over that Corvette. And when it comes in, that Corvette will be sold to the highest bidder, and your Corvette will be sold to somebody else. Or it may

be sold to you for a whole lot more than what you thought you paid for it when you ordered it today. So read this blog, six pitfalls to avoid when ordering your car if you're going to order a car. And it's the smartest way, if you have to have a car, to get a car today, order it from the factory. Yeah, what a great column that is. You can read that in the hometown news. You can read it in Florida Weekly, so take advantage of that.

A lot of information in that column. And, you know, what we're doing is trying to, you know, maneuver all of you in these volatile times, and it is definitely volatile times. You've helped us with information, and we have helped you with information. And I want to take a moment and thank all of you, all of you, for tuning in every week to Earl Stewart on cars. We're going to go to our mystery shopping report, and as always, you're an important part of the mystery shopping report.

You can text us at 772-4976530 with your rate, with your grade on the mystery shopping report. And that mystery shopping report is from Auto Nation, Honda of Hollywood. now back to the recovering car dealer. Yeah, and this report is a relatively short report, so we'll probably get back to text and YouTube post and Facebook post after the report. So we're going to turn off the phone line while I read this mystery shopping report that Stu wrote,

and then after that we'll get back to Your Anonymous Feedback.com and as Nancy just gave you the text number, 772-4976530. That's 772-4976530. Okay, mystery shop. Auto Nation Honda of Hollywood, Florida. That Hollywood Honda has been there for a long time. It was originally started, I believe, by his name is shaping me.

I was the largest Honda dealership in the country for a while. It was really an amazing dealership Auto Nation now owns it. More than? Our mystery shop last week took us into the heart of the notorious South Florida car market during arguably the worst part of our never-ending inventory crisis

and everything turned out all right. J.M. Lexus and Margate will call it Fort Lauderdale everybody knows where Fort Lauderdale is. Proved there's always an exception to the rule. We gave them an A-minus, and even air in the pit of Sodom and Gomorrah of the car dealerships

A-minus for J.M. Lexus. Exceptional customer experience that would have been impressive any time an inventory crisis or not. So you want a Lexus and you live in Florida, buy it from J.M. Lexus in Margate, aka Fort Lauderdale. J.M. Lexus charged Agent Lightning just $299 over MSRP. Isn't that amazing? I say that. Anything that close to MSRP today is a good buy.

plus a mini dealer fee of $59.9. But everything was presented transparently and with zero pressure. And that's the name of the game, transparently. It was such a strange juxtaposition to the very bad car dealer behavior we have in South Florida. Just any other place they could have gone in any direction, particularly if they went to L. Hendricks and Toyota, would have been a much different experience. For those listeners outside our area, South Florida, basically consists of three counties, Miami-Dade,

Broward, and Palm Beach, with a total population of nearly 10 million. That's interesting. I thought it was more than that, but 10 million? What's what Palm Beach County? Two million? Something like that? It's an unbroken metro sprawl. I like that.

That runs from Jupiter through Miami. Jupiter is an extreme north end of Palm Beach County. The population gets denser the further south you go, and the denser of the population, the more car dealerships. I mean, wall-to-wall car dealerships in South Florida. It's kind of like Los Angeles. When you get all these car dealers crammed together, the competition gets fierce. A booming economy, a once-in-a-lifetime seller's market, and I can tell you,

we'll never see it as good again for car dealers. And no practical regulatory enforcement creates the perfect condition. a perfect storm for a dangerous consumer environment. This is why JM Lexus performance during our Mr. Shop was so remarkable. I'm telling you, GM Lexus could get away with $1,000 over MSRP or more. A business like GM Lexus that can self-regulate in the Internet in the interest of its customers is using long-term thinking. Very rare commodity among a lot of businesses.

sacrificing short-term windfalls to retain the trust of their customers. Using the word sacrifice is amusing to me because even self-regulating dealerships and making all-time record profits. Even my dealership who has drawn the line at MSRP is making more money than ever before. We had a record new car profit last month. It's sickening to think of the amount of money some of these dealers are making these days. I mean, we look at our financial statement and we feel bad. bad for you, bad for the customer, bad for you

because we're making so damn much money and then we look at the fact that we're charging less than anyone else and wonder how much could it be making I mean I'll digress a little bit in automotive news a trade journal this month this week I should say

automotive news they're talking about the record prices for car dealerships car dealerships are going for twice what they used to go for single point, privately owned cardiologists, are selling out to the large groups, the public groups, or the private groups. Right now, the large groups are selling one out of every four cartilages sold in the United States. They're making money hand over the fist, and they're buying out all the mom and pop shops. It's really crazy.

Okay, here's a report, and I'm speaking in the first term, is if I were Agent Lightning. Is that pronounced to Angelino, Angelino? Angiolino. Angiolino. That sounds almost feminine, but it was a male person, right? Yeah. Angelino, the salesman, was waiting by the front door and watched me as I parked my car and walked into the entrance.

I got to the door. He asked me if I was there to see anyone in particular. Said I didn't have an appointment, but I was very interested in a new Honda pilot. I appointed to the Grey Turing model. Park nearby told him I wanted something like that. Angelina asked me if I wanted him to get the keys, and I said, okay, the MSRP of the pilot was $46,920. There was no addendum sticker on the car. That's usually a red flag, and we see mostly red flags because most all cars have addendum stickers.

This car did not have an addendum sticker. He was only gone for a couple of minutes, and then he launched into a detailed presentation of the car. all its features. We took it for a test drive and heavy traffic. That's all you get down there in South Florida is heavy traffic, particularly in this area. Along the way, Angelina asked me if I was considering any other vehicles. I told him I was narrowing my search down to the Honda pilot and the Toyota Highlander. Angelina told me the pilot is much heavier and therefore much more stable. That's an interesting argument. He said I would feel the difference when I open and close the doors. He said he doesn't like the bad mouth the other brands, but it's just

that you could feel the difference between the Pott and the Highlander. That's good salesmanship. A lot of the salesmen just sell a price and they don't sell the product. This salesperson was selling the product. There was no selling of the price because he's not going to negotiate. We returned to the dealership and went to Angelina's desk. He asked for my driver's license and went about adding me to their computer system. He told me all about the inventory situation that most of the sales are orders, and I alluded to that earlier, and you should order a car. You buy the car on the floor, you got to be paying more money. Angelina, you also could be playing for the money and more money for the one you order, but not is much more.

Angelina told me that if I didn't take the car today, I should leave a deposit that way. I wouldn't lose that on the car I told him when it came in. Well, I alluded to that earlier. things you should do if you order a car. You want to have a legal buyer's car. I told him I still need to drive the Highlander and didn't want to give them a deposit till I had picked out the car I wanted, and that certainly is a good practice, good idea. Angelea warned me about all the other dealers were doing. He said AutoNation was not using markups or addendums. I remember that. Auto Nation was not using markups or addendums.

But the other dealers were, they were charging way over MSRP. Again, remember this paragraph. I asked to see the numbers, and Angelina left to get the worksheet. The top line was MSRP, $46,290. And remember he said earlier, the last paragraph, that other dealers are charging markups over MSRP. Okay, now his MSRP was 46-290. added a three-year protection package for 619 extended warranty yeah a three-year

dent protection package for 639 window tending for 299 wheel locks for 149 Kaching 149 electronic filing fee Kaching 899 dollar $899 dealer fee isn't fee I call it Kaching and of course the sales tax which is a government fee, which is the only thing okay that I just said, was a sales tax. And, of course, the license plate, I didn't mention that. Automation Honda was selling me to pilot, along with some stuff I didn't ask for, $2,754 worth of stuff over MSRP. So the total was $49,000.24 the MSRP was $646,290.

So when you hear they're not. not selling it over MSRP, they were selling it over MSRP, but in a different way. Dealers are adding addendums that are markups to market value, they call it, or adjustment addendum, they call it, just another form of a markup over MSRP. Relatively valueless addendums, dealer installed options, and hidden fees, dock fees, like electronic filing fee and dealer fee, these are all markups, just by a different name, a rose is it rose is still a markup and you mentioned you mentioned to me i didn't catch this when i was writing this stuff you caught this in their fine print yeah down at the bottom i'll show you this

it's uh the last page and i wrote it down i'll share the fine print the fine print i'll read it and then i'll hold it in front of the camera if you're streaming this it says optional products or services not required for vehicle purchase and it's in the fine print that you can't read so You can see my writing and you can see the fine print. No, you can't see the fine print, but you can't see mine writing. So that was devious. So then he said it tried to get him to take it off. Yeah, he did.

He tried to take it off while read that part of it. And the salesman basically said, let's see here, I'll just read it. I asked Angelo about the add-ons. He said, I didn't want any of it. I said I didn't want to have it. He said, if I didn't want on the ad, it's not he didn't think he could do anything about it because somebody was already installed on the vehicle. He said that if I gave him a deposit and bring to his manager, it would be a fight, but he would see what he could do.

So here were add-ons that were disclosed to be not required that Angelino was telling me he was required. at least his manager, he thought it would have required, and he would have to fight to get it taken off. So here we have dishonesty. And pressure. He's saying, give me some money. And pressure by the salesperson, and potentially by the manager. We didn't talk to the manager, but we could have. And it was a bit of a disappointment. AutoNation, CYA, covered themselves with the disclosure, but it was still in the fine print.

So, they can say that they're a publicly held company. Publicly held companies like AutoNation tend to be a little bit more careful about following the letter of the law. Unfortunately, a letter of law says you can disclose things and fine print. Everybody does it, but it's just not morally right, it's not ethical. So here we have a shopping report where it was a little more honest than we thought till we saw the fine print, which the sales manager probably would have argued about, fought for as the Angelina of the salesman said, and therefore we have a negative in this otherwise seemingly positive shopping report. Certainly it wasn't what we experienced at JM Lexus in that same area.

So we come to the point where we're going to vote on it, And you have to keep in mind that this was on a curve we grade, that's what I'm trying to say. And we are talking about South Florida where deception and distortion and bait and switch are commonplace. So call in your votes or write in your votes. We have Bob has already submitted his. He gave him three grades. He says, I have three grades, rode a nation Honda, F, T. C.

Sounds like an athlete, I guess. T doesn't want to, I think we're going to go with F. While we're waiting for these to come in. Well, no, let me comment on that because we have time. It was a joke, tongue and cheek, but it actually isn't a joke because, you know, the Federal Trade Commission says in writing is a violation to use anything in fine print that changes the advertised price. So that's exactly what Hollywood Honda did.

They put something in the fine print. They violated the Federal Trade Commission regulation, and they could be fine by the Federal Trade Commission or sued by the Federal Trade Commission, and they should be just like Napleson. So it's a question of degree of egregious versus not so egregious, but they're both violating Federal Trade Commission regulations. Okay.

I'm going to, I'll give them a D. I'm a really low passing grade because we've seen worse and we can't give everybody an F who does something wrong, but they did something wrong. And it doesn't sound like it's up to automation standards. Things are getting carried away in the exuberance of the South Florida car market. And I'm not, you know, criticizing you used to or Angel Lightning or anybody. I could have done the same thing. I read this with a magnifying glass. I used my iPhone and pulled up my magnifying app to read it.

But, you know, here's some people that are in the car business that missed the fine print. So, clearly, fine print is not disclosure, and that's true as the Federal Trade Commission, says it's a violation. But nobody enforces it. Ashley Moody doesn't afford it in Florida. No attorney journal enforces it. And even the Federal Trade Commission's not enforcing. So what good are all these rules and laws if they don't get enforced? You got some great trick?

I've got Mark Anderson, Mark from St. Louis, with a district. D. Brian said Laco. Come on, Angelino. Give me a break. D. Cramm 1624 says, go for the fight. He didn't give a grade, but he wants to see that fight. Tom Steckle, D. Unwanted add-ons plus outrageous dealer fees. Mark Smith with a D. Wayne Veit with a big F. Angel Cigaro with an F.

And I've got Negan 1 with an F. And Kirk in West Buy God, Virginia. I love that guy. The optimal fees add-ons are actually optimal slash mandatory. Optional if you want, I'm mandatory if you don't. A solid grade of F for deception. And for me, I'm going to go with, they get a D-minus because they're just playing games there, but it's like the same old thing we've seen over and over.

Yeah, yeah. As we speak about it, especially in view of the Napleson, fiasco with the Federal Trade Commission coming in, and then Hollywood Honda violating a Federal Trade Commission regulation, I guess it kind of got our ire up. I'm really surprised that we gave them since low scores, but my mind's going in the same direction. Nancy, how about you? I'm going to give them a D, and, you know, like someone said earlier, you know, bring the fight on. You say you just don't want the add-ons, you know, it's pretty clear.

so I give them a D I hope some of our regulators are listening now I hope lawyers are listening you know I'm not a lawyer I feel like I'm I think I know a lot of law

because I've been in the business so long and I really think that a good lawyer could go after Hollywood Honda and a lot of other car dealerships in Florida that are violating the Federal Trade Commission

regulation You know, what good is advertising rules and regulations? If you can advertise a price and totally compromises by unreadable fine print, what good is having documents to sign that if the intent and the apparent price you see on the document, when I hold this worksheet up, which is basically how they bought the cover, and you can see the large print and you literally can't read the fine print and you can see why the Federal Trade Commission makes that illegal why doesn't some attorney get a buyer's order a worksheet from some South Florida car dealerships and read the fine print or go to the advertising and take a screenshot of your TV screen when they run the ad or record the audio on a radio when they turn the speed of the audio up where it sounds like a scratch on a record or something. Why does to take that and put together a nice class action suit?

You can make yourself some serious money. I don't know why. Why do they let all the car dealers get away with? I have no idea. Here's an auto-nation store. You know, Mike Maruni, I think he's back as CEO. They brought him back. He retired, and they brought another CEO in.

and now they brought Maruni back. Mike Maruni is, he's a good guy, he's an honest guy. Why does he allow his dealerships, even to put that in the fine print? If it's a violation of Federal Trade Commission rule. And look at the Facebook, you think I'm wrong, I haven't written now, I have it in a blog somewhere. It basically says, I can almost know it by memory,

if you're going to modify the advertiser, quoted price, it must be displayed in the same size, fine, and boldness and apparentness, meaning next to the price that you're modifying. And that's what the Federal Trade Commission says, and they put it down the fine print. I mean, actually, to give them credit in the fine print, you can at least use a magnifying glass on television. You can't because by the time you get your magnifying glass and get up the screen, it flashes on the screen for three seconds.

I know, I've tried. I've almost tripped a couple times trying to get up to the screen. and you can't read it. Impossible. So, anyway, I had my vent. I'm through. So it's a grade, D? You don't have time for my vent.

This is AutoNation. I'm going to give them a D. All right, here we go. It just, D puts them on the proof of list because we have them on the curve. I think we're starting to grade harder than normal, and maybe we should. We're getting worn down. We're getting worn down, yeah. But we've alerted everyone.

It's a minefield out there. Stu, do you have any more grades? No, I just feel bad for all those car dealers out there who are suffering at our irritation and our anger. So we have time for a couple quick YouTube's? Absolutely. Yes, please. First one from Derek Lopez says, good morning.

Had F&I questions. Is it the most profit area for the dealership? Why are a majority of F&I guys pushy and take things personally when you don't buy anything? Because they can. It's like selling cars to do. day. If you don't want the car, he says to hell with you, the person just drove up, they're going to buy the car. Same thing with finance. If he doesn't finance you, the average

finance profit for the top five, four volume, auto public companies, and that's one out of four, you know, that's like a huge number of cars, is over $2,000 per car sold. Wow. Now, to answer his question, it isn't more than the selling price of the car, because now they're making more than $2,000 by far on Sony cars. So they make $4,000 selling you the car and make $2,000 financer the car. And that's commonplace today. And I'll put these two together.

Boston Ma is asking, what is the wait time on the RAV-4 hybrid and RAV-4 Prime? And John Strine is coming with, about how long would it take to receive a RAV-4 if I ordered one? I was told by one Toyota dealer, he could not order a vehicle that Toyota just allotments with no dealer input. Is this true? I'm going to need a car soon and really don't know what to do. No, just to answer the first question is a previous or a RAV4, any of the

primes are going to take over a year. A hybrid, probably six months to a year, a regular rev for three to six months. It's not true what they said about ordering. It's not an ordering system. It's up to the dealer if they want to take an order. We use a fancy shared Excel spreadsheet with a big list on it. If they won't take the order, go to a dealer that will take the order, you shouldn't buy out of stock. Right. So that's not true. A dealer decides if they want to take orders.

So go to the good ones. That's it. Very good information. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining us this morning. I hope that we have educated you. You certainly educate us week in and week out. And we'll see you right back here next week. 8 a.m. same time, same station.

Have a great weekend. Fet no. Fet no. Fet no. Tum. Vector Tum.